Letter From Europe
Intifadas through art
WRITING recently in the Daily Star, on the Spanish Intifada of May 2, 1802 against the French occupying forces, I commented that its history could of interest to the Bangladeshis because, in spite of the huge difference in time and geography, some may find certain similarities between our own struggle for independence in the late twentieth century and the Spanish war of independence of the early nineteenth century.
Besides the spontaneity of these popular uprisings, the adoption of guerrilla tactics to fight much superior military forces and the suffering of the ordinary people, there was one other similarity between these two intifadas -- artists of great talent poignantly captured the brutality of war and the atrocities committed during these periods for the future generations.
As the scope of a short newspaper article does not allow us to cover the works of all these artists, we shall, by way of reference, merely touch on the contribution made by two of them -- Goya and Monir.
When, in early 1808, Napoleon cunningly manipulated the then Spanish government to allow his troops to occupy Madrid and a good part of the Spanish territories and install his brother Joseph as the king of Spain, most of the aristocracy and many members of intelligentsia accepted the illegal occupation without a fight. But it was the ordinary people like bakers, masons, blacksmiths and grooms who rose up in arms against the usurpers.
On the morning of May 2, 1808, as the Spanish regular army troops remained confined to their barracks in Madrid with orders from the government not to intervene, thousands of ordinary people armed with knives, blunderbusses, scythes and sickles started attacking French soldiers across the city in a completely spontaneous and disorganised manner. The French retaliated. Fully armed combat troops opened fire on the crowds, killing hundreds of men, women and children.
During the night of May 2, hundreds of suspects were rounded up and in the morning of May 3, they were summarily executed by French firing squads.
Both of these events were admirably captured by the great Spanish painter Francisco Jose de Goya Lucientes (1746-1828), in his epic paintings The Second of May and The Third Of May
In commemorating the bicentennial of those events, Madrid has organised an impressive exhibition of Goya's paintings at the Prado Museum. "Goya in Times of War" (1794-1828) brings together about two hundred paintings, drawings and etchings from Prado's own collection and private collections.
Besides the paintings mentioned above -- The Second of May and The Third of May -- what attracts the attention of most visitors to the exhibition are the series of etchings and drawings called The Disasters of War, which depict the cruelty and horror of war in a most vivid manner.
Those of us who have become used to seeing the pictures coming out of American prisons like Abu Ghraib, and Guantanamo are particularly shocked by a watercolour titled One can't look, depicting the body of a tortured prisoner dangling upside down from the ceiling.
Like the French occupying army in Spain, the Pakistani army committed horrible atrocities against the innocent civilian population of Bangladesh. The internationally famous Bangladeshi artist Monir ul Islam used his artistic talent to denounce the Pakistani atrocities and depict the suffering of the Bangladeshis in a series of twelve etchings, appropriately called Homage to Bangladesh.
Francisco Jose de Goya Lucientes was born in a little village called Fuendetodos in the province of Aragon, which is approximately two hundred kilometres from Madrid. Fuendetodos is home to a unique museum called Sala Ignacio Zuluaga. Here, in this museum, an exhibition showing fifty four paintings, etchings and drawings of artist Monir ul Islam was inaugurated on January 19.
Some of the etchings of the Homage to Bangladesh series were on display here, and made a great impact on the visitors because they were able to relate the histories of the two intifadas in their minds quite easily
Oh, by the way, after the end of the exhibition on February 17, all of the 54 works of art by Monir were donated by him to the museum, and became part of Sala Zuluaga's permanent collections from then onwards.
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